able opportunity of to-morrow. Nothing is too great, no ideal too lofty, no hope too rich and deep for what may here be achieved. Upon these foundations already well and truly laid let great and numerous buildings stand. Let their halls resound with the hurrying feet of tens of thousands of high-spirited youth, making haste to laboratories, libraries, lecture rooms and seminaries of the highest research. Challenge the greatest universities from here all the way to Harvard, to Oxford and Cambridge, to Dublin and Edinburgh, to Paris and to Berlin. Emulate their achievements, learn to avoid their mistakes, and be content with naught less than equality with their best and noblest. Gather here the most gifted, the most ambitious, the most industrious youth, and bid them sit humbly at the feet not of cheap pedagogues, but before the faces of the most learned, the most skilful, the most inspiring men and women as their teachers. Let those who teach remember the glorious succession in which they stand from Irenius in Bologna to our day, and as they think how narrow was the Adriatic, and how vast the Pacific, how insignificant Bologna, how great and prosperous Los Angeles, let them do and dare mighty things undreamt before, nor yield to the enticement of any lesser ambition.

The past is secure, the future is here in the making, and the responsibility is ours. I have spoken with passionate earnestness, mindful of the past, eager to see a greater present, and full of hope for a larger future. The present only is ours in this mighty and inspiring task of education. I am not tremulous with fear, but buoyant with hope, and grimly determined to give my best to my profession, the profession of teaching, and to honor all who serve in a calling so ennobled by the past, so deeply needed in the present, and the present is only a moment, a fragment of time.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF AMERICAN LIFE

BERNARD C. EWER.
Pomona College

A GREAT philosophy is a point of view rather than a system of concepts. More than one great historic philosphy, in fact, has received its systematic formulation long after the death of its originator. Many an imposing system, too, wrought out in ponderous volumes of topics and subtopics, has proved lifeless. Philosophic vitality lies in the central idea, the living soul of thought.

We have had in American philosophy one vital spark of originality, and, so far as I am aware, only one. This is not to say that our country has lacked philosophic learning, or has failed to make notable contributions to systematic reflection. The work of Ladd, Bowne, Royce, and their disciples will always command respect and afford philosophic sustenance for the thoughtful. Some of this work seems to me distinctly the best literary expression which has been given to certain historical points of view. But it does not possess the peculiar characteristic of expressing the essential spirit of a time or people, of depicting in conceptual terms the mental life of a nation. It is this characteristic which distinguishes the philosophic utterances of William James and John Dewey. Their philosophy, commonly called pragmatism, is a revelation of certain moods of the human spirit, and, I believe, uniquely expressive of the soul of America.

In the few minutes during which I may claim your attention I should like to indicate briefly the systematic outlines of this philosophy, i.e., its principal concepts in the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and the philos

ophy of religion. This is not a discipular advocacy of pragmatism, or a critical attempt to evaluate its merits. I wish simply to exhibit the logical skeleton of a philosophy the living power of which seems to me very great, and which possibly is destined to play an increasingly large part in the affairs of mankind.

First, then, with regard to its metaphysical basis, let us note its fundamental assertion that reality is active experience. This doctrine is sharply distinct from other types of metaphysical theory. (a) It is not to be confused with the metaphysical dualism which finds reality to be ultimately of two kinds, matter, or physical energy, and mind. It is true that some of James' utterances, especially in his earlier writings, have a dualistic sound. But this, I think, is merely the inevitable use of language which was not constructed for philosophic purposes. James' real thought in the matter seems to me to be found rather in his later essays, particularly "Does Consciousness Exist?" and "A World of Pure Experience." Dewey's position is harder to discern, but such notes as I have made on the point seem to me to indicate the same metaphysical assumption. (b) This assumption is opposed to the idealisms which declare that reality is a transcendent or absolute experience, or system of ideas, or act of will. It has a certain puzzling kinship with voluntaristic idealism, but it emphasizes the reality of the finite being and repudiates the Infinite or Absolute Self and all its works. In this sense it is pluralistic. You will perhaps recall James' destructive analysis of the concept of relation, a concept which is the corner stone of absolutist philosophical structure. Dewey's thought here again is less explicit, but it is clearly enough implied in his teaching of the possibility of real accomplishment in this world of particulars. (c) It is also to be distinguished from such an empiricist metaphysics as that of John Stuart Mill. Reality, for our

American pragmatists, is active experience. Never in the previous history of thought, so far as I am aware, has empiricism been stated in precisely this form. Experience has been regarded as passive. According to this philosophy we make our own real universe, in reaction to our environment.

Experience in its highest form is both social and scientific, or rather is scientifically guided. How these features are blended we shall see presently. Here we may note simply that pragmatist philosophy reflects the contemporary preeminence of scientific study, and the new scientific and humanitarian interest in the phenomena of society. So much for the metaphysical theory of pragmatism. Its epistemology has been a battle-ground which it is hardly necessary to review in this meeting. I may remark briefly that the functional conception of knowledge, i.e. the conception of it as the active operation of ideas, the truth of which is identical with the success of operation, stands in contrast to the dualistic view that truth is the agreement of ideas with their objects, the said objects being generally independent of our ideas about them. According to pragmatism, objects are aspects of our purposes; in other words, we come back to the metaphysical assumption that reality is active experience. Further, the pragmatic doctrine stands in contrast to the teaching of idealism that truth is the agreement of finite ideas with the thought or feeling of the Absolute Mind. It seems to me virtually to abolish the historic distinction between the phenomenal and the noumenal, between appearance and reality, though of course the ordinary unphilosophical meaning of the terms remains. Facts are real as we directly experience them or study them scientifically, and there is no satisfactory evidence of a more "ultimate" reality. James' antipathy to Kant is especially significant in this respect. Scientific investigation is not the mere

deciphering of symbolic characters on a veil which ever conceals the real stage, but is a really illuminating advance into the unknown. Experimentation is therefore a a vital necessity of the mind in its search for truth. We create our truth, in fact, by the process of experiment.

Passing to the field of ethics, I have the impression that pragmatism is concerned less with the traditional conceptual problems of the subject, e.g., the ultimate nature of goodness and the moral possibility of indeterminism, than with what may be called ethical methodology, and the practical business of making improvements in this very sad world. James seems to take it for granted that we know well enough what to aim at, at least ordinarily, and that our difficulty is that of earnestly realizing our aims. This difficulty is due to the imperfection of human nature, and accordingly he addresses occasional hortatory remarks to the will, remarks which grip us as moral exhortation seldom does. Dewey is less inclined to emphasize individual responsibility and the unique force of active personal conscience. His contribution to the subject is mainly methodology, which seems to me his greatest philosophical accomplishment. According to it socialized effort, frankly experimental but scientifically guided, is the supreme duty of mankind. The distinction between this point of view and the traditional one of assuming absolute principles of right and wrong which we obey or disobey can hardly be exaggerated. One who finds, as an increasing number of thoughtful persons are finding, that mankind, and especially the rulers of mankind, actuated by other principles, have made a sorry mess of human affairs, naturally looks with favor upon ethical pragmatism.

This matter is so important as to deserve one or two concrete illustrations. James, like the rest us, looked upon war as an evil. But he saw psychologically its tenacious roots which do not yield to moralistic exhortation,